


Where Hubflower Blooms

by VespidaeQueen



Series: Simulate Hearts [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 19:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5838091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VespidaeQueen/pseuds/VespidaeQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When she asks him to head up to Vault 111 with her in the dead of morning, all red-eyed and with a faltering smile, he should have suspected something was wrong.</i>
</p><p>In which Nick Valentine helps to bury Nate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Hubflower Blooms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YamiSnuffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiSnuffles/gifts).



> Written for Yamisnuffles for the prompt _Things you said when I was crying_. Sole Survivor's name is Aubrey Cooper.

He’s performing some routine diagnostics, under the assumption that everyone else is asleep, when he’s knocked out of them by the sound of her voice.

“Hey, Valentine” she says, leaning up against the wall, looking far smaller than normal in a tattered shirt that’s gone threadbare all down the right arm. Even in the dim light, he can see that her eyes are puffy, creases under her eyes all caught up with yesterday’s makeup. “You got a minute?”

His internal clock reads 4:36 am.

The diagnostics come back fine; always a good report to get. “For you? I’ve got all the time in the world.”

She smiles, and Nick thinks ‘ _a hundred years from now and I’m going to remember ever single smile she’s given me.’_

This one, though? Barely touches her eyes.

“Good,” she says. “I’ve got a thing I need to do, and I don’t think I can do it alone.”

 

***

 

She’s got a pair of oversized boots on, and a ratty coat thrown over her tattered shirt. Shovel over her shoulder, and she holds it like she would a sledgehammer (though he knows she prefers a pistol, something that fits her hands and won’t strain her shoulders, won’t slow her down when she has to run).

She doesn’t say what they’re doing, and he doesn’t ask. Just follows her up the hill to Vault 111, where she sets the shovel down and -

Well -

He’s a god damn detective and he _should_ have figured it out before he’s standing with her before a cryo pod. Should have picked up on it from the shovel, the redness to her eyes, the way her smile wasn’t as bright.

But he doesn’t, not until she’s punching commands into a console and the pod opens up with a hiss. Not until he sees that there’s a man in the pod, blood all down his front, frozen to the ground.

“Now that’s not -” he starts, and something glitches, a little hiccup in all that wiring that makes up his head and his body. His simulate heart turns over as his voice cuts out and he thinks, as he often does, _why did they have to program us with pain?_

He can’t see Aubrey’s face, but her shoulders hitch.

“I’m _so sorry_.”

It’s never enough. One apology, two, one hundred - he remembers Jenny, dead on the ground. Can’t forget that moment, not ever. He remembers it like it’s yesterday, like it’s happening right now.

And Aubrey’s holding a dead man who’s blood is slowly thawing, and this is a death that might as well have happened yesterday.

Two hundred year old corpses. Funny how the past doesn’t go away.

“Wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Aubrey says, so soft he can barely hear. “I’m sorry I didn’t - I’m _sorry_.”

And then she looks at him, the bright lights of the vault making her look for all the world like a corpse herself, and her eyes are red.

“I don’t think I can carry him by myself,” she says. “But I can’t leave him here. Can you -?”

“You don’t even have to ask,” he says.

 

***

 

Nate - he remembers Aubrey telling him her husband’s name - is - _was_  - a big, tall, strong man. The sort to strap themselves into power armor and take on the world with a gun too sizes to big for the rest of the folks out there. He’s heavy, and while Nick could probably carry him himself, Aubrey slings an arm over her shoulder and they both, together, haul his body out of the vault.

There’s blood all over her shirt by the time they’re out into the morning light, all melted off of her husband as his body thaws, and they lay him out beneath a tree before Aubrey grabs up the shovel and starts digging.

And she digs and she digs, until her arms are trembling and she’s covered in dirt; she digs like she _has_  to, and, Nick realizes, she _does_.

She’s putting something to rest after over two hundred years, even if it’s been little more than a heartbeat for her.

And then she drops the shovel and she pitches forward, and at first he think she’s stumbled, but -

There’s only so long you can hold things together, and she’s held herself by broken edges for far longer than he ever did when he saw Jenny shot in front of him.

He catches her, and he might be one ugly lump of metal, but he’s one ugly lump of metal who’s her friend. She cries into his chest, all covered in blood and dirt and tears, cries until the sound is raw and hoarse, until she’s just shaking silently against him.

“Sorry,” she says, softly, not looking up. “I’ve covered your shirt with snot.”

“It’s seen worse,” he tells her. “A little grief’s not going to ruin it.”

She laughs, like what he’s said is funny, and maybe it is. But she sits up and wipes at her eyes, runs little tracks of dirt across her cheeks.

“Thank you, Nick,” she says. She doesn’t have to specify for what.

 

***

 

They bury Nate up on the hill, pack the earth tightly over his body, and as Aubrey sits to rest Nick excuses himself, just for a moment, and he takes the shovel with him. Something _he_  has to do, and she doesn’t question.

When he comes back, it’s with a small hubflower plant, the best he could find in the area, and while Aubrey watches he plants it at the head of Nate’s grave.

“It’s not much,” he tells her, seeing tears brimming once more in her eyes. “But I - they’re hardy things. I planted one down where Jenny - well, I thought you might want something, to mark -”

She hugs him tight before he can finish, fresh tears against the lapel of his coat.

“ _Thank you_ ,” she says, and her voice is so raw. She kisses his cheek and then buries her head against his shoulder and he thinks -

Maybe he can bring a little bit of sunlight to this wasteland that tries so hard to take away everything.

 


End file.
